This Isn't Your Dad's Disney

July 7, 1999|The Washington Post

LOS ANGELES — Are risky movies difficult to make? Sure they are. Just not at movie studios like Disney.

Disney? Well, yes. Not the Sneezy-Dopey-Happy Disney that you remember from March (Doug's 1st Movie). Or even ... February (My Favorite Martian). Not the Disney that recently distanced itself from Dogma, an irreverent take on Catholicism that the Disney-owned art-house studio, Miramax, felt compelled to jettison.

No, there's another Disney. Lately, the most image-conscious of all studios suddenly finds itself with a list of edgy projects more often associated with scrappy independent distributors.

Surprise: Disney had three films (most major studios had none) at this year's Cannes festival. There was a black comedy about the McCarthy era by director Tim Robbins called Cradle Will Rock. There was the quirky David Lynch's The Straight Story, about a man who rides his lawn mower halfway across the country to see an estranged, sick brother. There was Spike Lee's racy Summer of Sam, about streetwise friends in the Bronx in 1977, which opened commercially on Friday. The film had been threatened by the ratings board with an NC-17 until Lee cut it to an R.

Disney also has a movie being written by newcomer Wes Anderson, who came up with last year's off-the-wall comedy Rushmore, about a feisty high school nerd, and is shooting a movie based on Homer's Odyssey directed by Ethan and Joel Coen. It's called Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and definitely will not have cuddly tie-in toys. (In the Coens' hands, Cyclops becomes a Klansman with a one-hole hood.)

Could a nose ring for Mickey Mouse be far behind?

As Disney has reduced its movie production slate to about 20 per year, the house that Walt built also has taken some risks on modestly budgeted, unusual fare. With the moviemaking business in a slump, one way to get through it is to take a chance on talent, says studio chief Joe Roth.

"What you're seeing is the proportion of these movies being greater because we're making fewer large dramas. Frankly, those movies end up costing too much money," says Roth. He forged relationships with quirky directors like the Coen brothers while an executive at 20th Century Fox and insists his choices are financially sound.

"It's hard to find good, young filmmakers whose work you think is great," he says. "And if you can make these movies for a price, they can be financially responsible moves."

Even prickly directors like Lee seem to feel comfortable with the artistic freedom at a place sometimes referred to as "Mauschwitz" for its severe work ethic and penny-pinching ethos. He told reporters in Cannes that Roth "has been supporting me from the get-go."

Similarly, other Disney directors hardly fit the conservative mold. Anderson, 27, is a geeky intellectual with thick glasses and a severe, introverted personality; critics praised Rushmore last year. Robbins is a leftist filmmaker who bristles at studio interference. Oddly enough, Walt Disney was an unapologetic commie-basher.

"This is not exactly the image you would have of a Disney filmmaker. The traditional image of a Disney filmmaker is someone who's invisible," says Richard Jewell, a film history professor at the University of Southern California. Think of the late years of Walt Disney, of movies like Flubber; do we remember any filmmakers who made those? They're Disney -- not auteur -- films."

Even just before Roth's tenure, when former studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to revive the company with animation hits and mid-range-budget movies, Disney was not known as a place that nurtured cutting-edge talent.

Disney chooses this route just as the trail-blazing Miramax, owned by corporate parent Walt Disney Co., is distancing itself from controversy. As rumors leaked two months ago that the still-unfinished Dogma, from writer-director Kevin Smith, was anti-Catholic, Miramax decided to save Disney the headache. Studio chiefs Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought the film themselves for $14 million to distribute independently.